SMITH: THESE GAMES ARE FOR FITNESS

Boro Player spoke to manager Gary Smith after his side drew 1-1 with Blue Square South side Boreham Wood at Meadow Park, and he was pleased to see his players get a run out.

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“They’ve been training for ten days now and I think that the guys have got mentally ready for a game of football” he began. “Training is always a difficult prospect – you’ve got to get your spade work done and your foundation in place but I think that everybody was pleased to get out there and get 45 minutes.”

Boro used 22 players with two separate XIs in each half, including plenty of trialists, and Smith identified this as a reason not to judge the performance on what he would expect from his side come the start of the season.

“There are lots of trialists involved; there are guys there who want to make a bit of an impression so you don’t always get the picture that you’re after.

“These games are for fitness and for trying to get your best foot forward and trying to get some sort of picture to the group again, and of course adding players that we might well need for the future.

“We had two very different periods here, the first half I think we looked a little bit disjointed but in the second period there was a lot more tempo to our play. In the end it was a real good workout for the end of what is a second week back to pre-season.”

For the travelling Stevenage fans it was a chance to get an eye on some new faces that have come in over the summer and the manager felt that many of those players gave good accounts of themselves when pulling the shirt on for the first time.

“There are some individuals now that I think the fans will be able to get behind and really elevate to the next level.” He said.

“Filipe Morais has got wonderful feet and really good techniques. Marcus Haber, for a centre forward, has got very tight techniques and is pretty mobile as well and we saw him score a fantastic header today.

“You start to add into that the guys in the central midfield areas; Greg Tansey has got the ability to get beyond his opponent and get efforts at goal and James Dunne has shown what a talented football he is as well. There were some encouraging signs but it’s still very early and later on in pre-season we will start to bring all of that together and hopefully start to weave it all into one picture.”

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Boro’s pre-season campaign continues on Wednesday evening at home to Tottenham Hotspur at The Lamex Stadium.